Friday, May 20, 2011

EKB Capsule News...Kentucky...5-21-'11

12 people are behind bars and sheriff deputies are searching for three other suspects in Pike County The suspects are accused of selling cocaine or prescription pills.

Police say one woman even had drugs around her children. Pike County Sheriff Deputies say months of undercover work led them to 14 people allegedly selling drugs. “Selling them all over Pike County and eastern Kentucky,” Sheriff Charles “Fuzzy” Keesee said. Undercover officers say the suspects were selling either prescription pills or cocaine.
Friday morning, deputies got warrants and made arrests. So far, 11 suspects are in custody and they are searching for three others. Deputies say they got a surprise at one house. They say they were arresting a man and found a woman there with drugs and her two children there and not in school. That woman, Traci Murphy of Virgie, was also arrested and charged with drug possession. Social Services took the two children into custody.
The following were arrested:
• Timmy Casey, 44, Phelps
• Alicia Lee Johnson, 23, Virgie
• Christopher Holbrooks, 26, Rockhouse
• Maxwell Mark Tackett, 42, Virgie
• Jodi Ann Taylor, 35, Virgie
• Jason Dean Maynor, 31, Virgie
• Chris Taylor, 38, Virgie
• Jamie Ratliff, 39, Regina
• William Johnny Slone, 51, Mouthcard
• Charles Ratliff, 66, Regina
• Phillip West, 68, Coon Creek
• Traci Murphy, Virgie

Paintsville Police say they responded to a call of an unresponsive infant at the Hidden Valley Apartments on November 13, 2010. The Johnson County Coroner arrived at the scene and pronounced the almost 5-month-old baby Draven dead. Wednesday, the Johnson County Grand Jury indicted Draven's mother, 34 year old Heather Stambaugh and Draven's grandmother, 65 year old Alice Stambaugh for second degree manslaughter. Both were arrested Thursday. According to the indictment, Draven died of an overdose of Benadryl and Soma. If convicted, Heather Stambaugh and Alice Stambaugh each face 5 to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.

Kentucky law allows each school district to decide whether to use corporal punishment. James Wallace and his wife, Tammy, gave permission for the principal at Belfry Middle School in Pike County to paddle their 12-year-old son in November for spitting on another child during a fight. A board that regulates teachers in Kentucky is investigating the incident after Wallace says his son ended up in a hospital emergency room for treatment of bruises and blisters on his buttocks. Principal Matt Mercer says he did not use excessive force. Pike County Schools personnel director Ralph Kilgore said he was satisfied after an internal district investigation that Mercer, whose school has recently received national accolades, had followed board policy. Kilgore says he immediately notified social services and other agencies of the allegations, which he said the district took seriously. Pike County is among 45 school districts in Kentucky that report allowing corporal punishment. The case comes at a time when the Blueprint for Kentucky's Children, a six-year plan to improve child well-being in Kentucky, is calling for all school districts to stop corporal punishment. A 2010 Safe Schools Data Project report from the Kentucky Center for School Safety shows there were 1, 573 incidents of corporal punishment in the 2009-10 school year in Kentucky. That's a 0.3 percent increase from the previous year, but down from the 3,460 incidents reported in the 2005-06 school year.

Kentucky has reached a $6.5 million settlement with Mylan Laboratories Inc. and Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc. Attorney General Jack Conway's office says the case stems from the state Medicaid program's use of published average wholesale prices to determine reimbursement rates for drugs. In a statement, the attorney general's office said Mylan published inflated prices, causing the Medicaid program to pay more for Mylan's drugs than Kentucky pharmacies had to pay for them.

Fifty-eight year old Randy "Macho Man" Savage, the professional wrestler who got his start in Lexington, died in a car crash Friday in Florida. Florida Highway Patrol say the former wrestler, whose legal name was Randy Mario Poffo, was driving a Jeep Wrangler when he lost control in Seminole around 9:25 A.M. The Jeep veered over the raised concrete median divider, crossed the eastbound lanes and collided head-on with a tree. Barbara L. Poffo, 56, suffered minor injuries. Savage was under contract with WWE from 1985 to 1993. Savage's father, Angelo Poffo, who wrestled in the '50s and '60s, ran International Championship Wrestling in Lexington, where Savage wrestled in the beginning of his career.

Kentucky’s seasonally adjusted preliminary unemployment rate fell from 10.2 percent in March 2011 to 10 percent in April 2011, according to the Office of Employment and Training (OET), an agency of the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet. The preliminary April 2011 jobless rate dropped .6 percentage point below the 10.6 percent rate recorded in April 2010 for the state. The 10 percent rate recorded in April 2011 is the lowest rate since February 2009 when it was 9.8 percent.